4 ms·

OK I am not a racist. Let me just affirm that. Here is my question- what if the tenets of racism - that race is tied in some fundamental way to a profile of ab

OK I am not a racist. Let me just affirm that. Here is my question- what if the tenets of racism - that race is tied in some fundamental way to a profile of abilities and deficits- is right? It's a possible world. Ethnically Jewish people could just be born with more verbal ability than whites. That is not impossible. My point is this. By demanding a world in which some things cannot even be spoken of (except by critics) you're amputating our ability to know reality. If people with your opinion in the 1800s had achieved the type of dominion over others you now seek, there would not be womens right and there would not be gay rights and there would not be equal rights. The built-in assumption of your post is- we have reached a point of final knowledge about the physical universe and what is and is not possible in it. All further inquiries are a sort of crime. This is exactly the attitude the old Soviet Union took towards evolution and Mao took towards, well everything really. It's the grand totalitarian error at its core, irrespective of what claims it makes for itself.

gotostatement 5y ago
Race is a socially constructed category. The idea that someone is a different "race" just because they look different is not supported by biology. In all metrics there is more variation within a group than between groups. So the "tenets of racism" have been decisively disproven many times over. The problem with defeating these in the marketplace of ideas, so to speak, is that their propagation has nothing to do with logic. People who believe them would find a way to dismiss any logical counterargument. The only way to squash it, arguably, is to prevent it. Not to mention the fact that people who are targeted by these ideas, which deny their humanity, are going to feel hurt and excluded in any space that allows it. So preventing that from happening is a real-time, concrete concern.
- dslkfjg 5y ago
  >>Race is a socially constructed category. This is Mao telling me I'm reactionary. It's Freud telling me I am going after his theories because I am projecting and have an Oedipal Complex. You missed the point I was making. When 23andMe tells me I'm Jewish and I share 99% of my profile with fellow Jews whether or not "race is a social construct" used by some people for nefarious ends, the facts remain where they are. Some ethnicities suffer from certain diseases at a rate far exceeding other ethnicities. That's genetic. That's the action of, in some cases a defect on a single gene. If you want to say those people are not a race, then fine, I'm not inclined to argue with you. The point is that the possibility that shared genetic profiles are responsible for abilities and disabilities- which is something in the neighborhood of what bad racists are leveraging for effect, is not completely impossible. I appreciate the anti-racist ethos. All humans are equal in my eyes merely for the fact of being human, full stop, no exceptions. It is still possible that genes control abilities and deficits and that shared genes result in shared outcomes. That is still a reasonable hypothesis and in the cse of outright maladies, more than a hypothesis. If you want to have good outcomes, including societal outcomes, you need to know what is causing the outcomes you have. You cannot dictate causality; it needs to be discovered. Dictating causality looks like this: https://allthatsinteresting.com/trofim-lysenko https://allthatsinteresting.com/trofim-lysenko https://theconversation.com/the-tragic-story-of-soviet-genetics-shows-the-folly-of-political-meddling-in-science-72580 https://theconversation.com/the-tragic-story-of-soviet-genet...
  - gotostatement 5y ago
    I understand what you're saying, but I'm just telling you it's a scientific fact that race is a social construct in the sense that on all the relevant metrics that are usually talked about, like intelligence, ability, etc, there is more intragroup variation than intergroup variation.
    - dslkfjg 5y ago
      That's true. There is more intra-group variation because within any group you have geniuses and you have morons, which is the widest spread you can have either intra-group or inter-group.
      - gotostatement 5y ago
        If every group is a bell curve, then the curves have similar variance and similar mean as well, and the variance within each group is larger than the difference between the means, and the differences are not big enough to say in a meaningful way that one group is smarter than another.
    - dTal 5y ago
      That's not a particularly useful sense. There's more variation in height amongst men and women than between them too, but we're still perfectly happy to say that men are taller than women.
      - gotostatement 5y ago
        bad analogy. the height variance (not absolute bounds) in each sex is probably smaller than the difference in mean height. whereas this is not true of other metrics like intelligence
        dTal 5y ago
        And why should that mark the Authoritative Threshold on whether a statistical skew counts as a "social construct"? And if we crunched the numbers and falsified your assertion? Would you really turn on a dime and accept that okay, it's a social construct that men are taller?
- robin21 5y ago
  People are called “racist” for things many would disagree has anything to do with race. I’m pretty sure if you insisted on not renaming master branch to main, people would call you a racist.
dTal 5y ago
> By demanding a world in which some things cannot even be spoken of Excuse me, I demanded no such thing. I thought it was fairly clear that I was advocating against censorship, which invariably forces people into deeper and less accessible echo chambers. How are we supposed to convince the racists that they're wrong if we can't even see them being racist, or talk to them about it? I'm genuinely baffled as to how "let's not hide the racists from view" can be interpreted as "ban the racists". But you may not have been the only one, as I earned many downvotes for some reason. Are these the only two options in the discourse? Turn our backs so that "everyone can get along", or pay "content moderators" to do it for us? Can we not, you know, let em talk and use our words?
- dslkfjg 5y ago
  I may have replied to the wrong person here. My mistake for which I apologize.

gotostatement 5y ago

Race is a socially constructed category. The idea that someone is a different "race" just because they look different is not supported by biology. In all metrics there is more variation within a group than between groups. So the "tenets of racism" have been decisively disproven many times over. The problem with defeating these in the marketplace of ideas, so to speak, is that their propagation has nothing to do with logic. People who believe them would find a way to dismiss any logical counterargument. The only way to squash it, arguably, is to prevent it. Not to mention the fact that people who are targeted by these ideas, which deny their humanity, are going to feel hurt and excluded in any space that allows it. So preventing that from happening is a real-time, concrete concern.

dslkfjg 5y ago
>>Race is a socially constructed category. This is Mao telling me I'm reactionary. It's Freud telling me I am going after his theories because I am projecting and have an Oedipal Complex. You missed the point I was making. When 23andMe tells me I'm Jewish and I share 99% of my profile with fellow Jews whether or not "race is a social construct" used by some people for nefarious ends, the facts remain where they are. Some ethnicities suffer from certain diseases at a rate far exceeding other ethnicities. That's genetic. That's the action of, in some cases a defect on a single gene. If you want to say those people are not a race, then fine, I'm not inclined to argue with you. The point is that the possibility that shared genetic profiles are responsible for abilities and disabilities- which is something in the neighborhood of what bad racists are leveraging for effect, is not completely impossible. I appreciate the anti-racist ethos. All humans are equal in my eyes merely for the fact of being human, full stop, no exceptions. It is still possible that genes control abilities and deficits and that shared genes result in shared outcomes. That is still a reasonable hypothesis and in the cse of outright maladies, more than a hypothesis. If you want to have good outcomes, including societal outcomes, you need to know what is causing the outcomes you have. You cannot dictate causality; it needs to be discovered. Dictating causality looks like this: https://allthatsinteresting.com/trofim-lysenko https://allthatsinteresting.com/trofim-lysenko https://theconversation.com/the-tragic-story-of-soviet-genetics-shows-the-folly-of-political-meddling-in-science-72580 https://theconversation.com/the-tragic-story-of-soviet-genet...
- gotostatement 5y ago
  I understand what you're saying, but I'm just telling you it's a scientific fact that race is a social construct in the sense that on all the relevant metrics that are usually talked about, like intelligence, ability, etc, there is more intragroup variation than intergroup variation.
  - dslkfjg 5y ago
    That's true. There is more intra-group variation because within any group you have geniuses and you have morons, which is the widest spread you can have either intra-group or inter-group.
    - gotostatement 5y ago
      If every group is a bell curve, then the curves have similar variance and similar mean as well, and the variance within each group is larger than the difference between the means, and the differences are not big enough to say in a meaningful way that one group is smarter than another.
  - dTal 5y ago
    That's not a particularly useful sense. There's more variation in height amongst men and women than between them too, but we're still perfectly happy to say that men are taller than women.
    - gotostatement 5y ago
      bad analogy. the height variance (not absolute bounds) in each sex is probably smaller than the difference in mean height. whereas this is not true of other metrics like intelligence
      - dTal 5y ago
        And why should that mark the Authoritative Threshold on whether a statistical skew counts as a "social construct"? And if we crunched the numbers and falsified your assertion? Would you really turn on a dime and accept that okay, it's a social construct that men are taller?
robin21 5y ago
People are called “racist” for things many would disagree has anything to do with race. I’m pretty sure if you insisted on not renaming master branch to main, people would call you a racist.

dTal 5y ago

> By demanding a world in which some things cannot even be spoken of Excuse me, I demanded no such thing. I thought it was fairly clear that I was advocating against censorship, which invariably forces people into deeper and less accessible echo chambers. How are we supposed to convince the racists that they're wrong if we can't even see them being racist, or talk to them about it? I'm genuinely baffled as to how "let's not hide the racists from view" can be interpreted as "ban the racists". But you may not have been the only one, as I earned many downvotes for some reason. Are these the only two options in the discourse? Turn our backs so that "everyone can get along", or pay "content moderators" to do it for us? Can we not, you know, let em talk and use our words?

dslkfjg 5y ago
I may have replied to the wrong person here. My mistake for which I apologize.